Last Saturday, we were going on a break at a countryside spa. I would take care of Phoebe so my wife, Catie, could be pampered. That was the plan, but typically an attempt to eradicate stress had the opposite effect.

We were both knackered: I’d driven from Bristol early that morning while Catie had been kept up late by a party next door. We were only half ready to leave by 4pm. Hoping to make the most of dwindling time, we cajoled each other, sniped a little and tried to rush things. Tensions were rising.

Once we got on the road, the traffic was terrible. We live near Westfield shopping centre in up-and-coming Shepherd’s Bush. And I am not just saying that because we’re trying to sell our house. It’s awesome here now. Except at weekends when cars prowl the clogged streets looking for parking spaces, like leopards stalking elusive gazelles. It took us five minutes just to get out of our road. Then, a quarter of an hour later, stuck on the Westway, my wife couldn’t find her phone. Had she dropped it in the road in all the rush? Of course not. It had to be in the car or the house. We might have thought of ringing it to check, but instead I found a way of getting off the road and turning round.

There was, of course, nowhere to park in the continuing game of musical vehicles. Horns blasted, people shouted, ‘No, you f***ing back up’. My back knots were getting back knots. I hoped I’d die, so I could escape Shepherd’s Bush for the relative idyll of hell.

My wife rushed up the road but clearly hadn’t found the phone. Finally my brain kicked into gear. I could ring her number and walk down the street where I’d hear it if it had fallen under a car. I parked on double yellow lines and rushed off on my quest. I had no joy, so went into the house. Catie was fraught, ‘It’s not here. I’ve lost it…’ But she saw I was alone. ‘Where’s Phoebe?!’

Oh yes, that’s right. She was still in the car. I mean, she was safely locked in (admittedly in a illegally parked vehicle that could be towed away any second and with no air conditioning). So this is how it feels to be an awful human being.
We ran to the car and she was fine. We got back in. I rang her phone again and my wife heard it buzzing. It had been tucked in the baby seat all along.

Luckily we were both complicit in this disaster. Consequently neither of us could give the other a hard time. And we made a silent contract to not make a fuss and get on our way.

Surely the weekend could only get better. You’d think not. But it did. To be continued…Richard Herring is at London’s Leicester Square Theatre from Aug 7. richardherring.com